


Fleimkepa

by eternaleponine



Series: Clexathon 2016 [7]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post Season 3, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8883208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: Clarke thought she lost the Flame, but it turns out that Raven just borrowed it.  Raven tries her best to give Clarke some comfort.





	

Clarke sank down to the ground, her head in her hands. Her eyes burned with tears that refused to fall, or maybe it was just exhaustion, she didn't know anymore. It didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.

She ran her fingers through her hair and they tangled in the knotted braids, and she clawed at them furiously, trying to rip them out, yanking and tugging until it felt like her scalp must be bleeding and so what if it was? 

If she didn't tear it out herself the radiation would eventually make it fall out anyway, so who cared? She looked around, searching for a knife, but there wasn't one within reach, maybe there wasn't one in the room at all because maybe they'd searched the room and removed anything that might be used as a weapon. Except...

She swallowed hard, looked back at the bed and the kit that was spread across it, the kit that was missing the only part of it that was truly important, the only part that could not be replaced... and she'd lost it.

She'd lost the Flame.

She wasn't _Heda_ anymore... that had lasted... an hour? Less? 

She laughed at the significance that fragment of time had taken, but there no humor in it, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth. 

She wasn't _Fleimkepa_ when there was no flame to keep. 

She wasn't even Clarke; she didn't even remember who that was anymore, at least outside of that one hour, less, that she'd had where everything else was stripped away – literally and metaphorically – and she was only a girl...

... who had loved another girl...

She made herself stop. She couldn't think about it. There was no time for that kind of self-indulgence. 

She had to save her people.

Again.

But how? 

She wasn't a savior. She was _Wanheda_. Commander of Death.

Over. And over. And over again.

Everyone she loved died. 

Why would this time be any different?

* * *

Raven twisted the last piece of wire carefully into place, and then nestled everything back into the little tin where it was kept. She shouldn't have taken it, and she knew it, but she'd seen the way that Clarke clutched it, seen the way that she'd held it, white-knuckled, doing everything one-handed because she refused to let it go, and she got it. She did. 

But with what they were facing – and she knew what they were facing, had read the writing on the wall as clearly as if it _had_ been written on the wall – it would be all hands on deck. Literally and metaphorically. Clarke couldn't do this with one hand tied behind her back.

So she'd taken the Flame while Clarke was sleeping, a drug-induced doze that she was sure that Abby would pay for later, but it had been necessary. 

She limped up the stairs, cursing the Commander for deciding that the place from which she could best overlook her... kingdom? queendom? but the Commander was not a queen, so domain, she guessed... was from the top of tower that had more floors than Raven had bothered to count. 

She hated it here, would rather have stayed in Arkadia, in her workshop where she could actually be useful, but Abby had sent for her to come to Polis and she'd come, because there were talks that were going to happen and she wanted Raven there to help analyze things and break them down. She'd promised that it wouldn't be for long, but Raven wasn't sure whether or not to believe her. 

She rapped her knuckles on the door, and pushed it open when there was no answer. "Clarke?"

She shuffled farther into the room, looking around. It looked like the place had been ransacked. She finally saw Clarke curled up on the floor, a scalpel in her hand, and Raven wasn't sure she'd ever moved as fast as she did to get to her, to grab her hand and stop her from doing whatever she had been about to do. "No," she said, prying it from her fingers, throwing it so that it clanged against the stone and then skittered under one of the couches. "Clarke, no."

Clarke just looked at her, blinking like she didn't even recognize her, but after a second her eyes seemed to clear, at least a little. They were still bloodshot, red-rimmed, and she looked like hell. "I'm sick of it," she said.

"Sick of what?" Raven asked, not sure she was ready for the answer.

"This," Clarke said, yanking at her hair. 

"Oh." Raven shrugged. "Yeah, maybe not your best look. But even Grounders take baths, right? We can fix it."

Clarke's eyes narrowed and her expression went flat and cold. "What do you want, Raven?" she asked. 

_Shit._ Clarke clearly wasn't in a joking mood, and normally Raven wouldn't have cared, but if she was going to get her friend back, she was going to have to play the game by the rules that Clarke dictated, at least to an extent. So no making jokes about dirty Grounders, apparently.

"We can fix it," she repeated. "I'll go... find someone."

She went out into the hallway, found one of the guards. She wasn't sure if they were meant to keep Clarke in, or keep others out. Maybe it was both. Or maybe they just didn't know what else to do with themselves. "What does a girl need to do to get clean around here?" she asked.

The guard looked her up and down, and she rolled her eyes. "Not me. Clarke. _Wanheda_."

He nodded and walked away without a word. She wasn't sure if her question had been understood until several Grounders who did not appear to be guards, but maybe servants? Attendants of some kind, anyway, came to the door with buckets and buckets of hot water. They marched through as if she wasn't there (and seemed to be studiously ignoring the wreckage of the room and the fact that Clarke was still on the floor) and into another adjoining room, where it was poured into a tub.

One of the servants-slash-attendants stayed behind, a teenage-ish girl with wide eyes and intricately braided hair. She moved toward Clarke, and Raven intercepted her. "I've got it," she said. "Okay? Just... go... do whatever you do."

The girl pursed her lips, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a lump of something that Raven assumed must be soap. She pressed it into Raven's hand. "Tell _Wanheda_..." She frowned. "Tell her we hid it. From the other one."

"Right," Raven said. "Thanks."

The girl nodded, and left, and it was only Raven and Clarke again. 

"Come on," Raven said. "Up."

* * *

Clarke allowed herself to be hauled to her feet, because it was easier than arguing. She let Raven peel away the layers of clothing that she wore, the things that had once belonged to a Commander, but not Lexa... she had nothing left of Lexa...

"You're doing the rest yourself," Raven said when she got down to the last layer. "I mean, I love you and all, but there are limits." She grinned, but Clarke didn't smile back. She knew she should. She knew that she should put on a happy face, really try to sell it, but she didn't have it in her. Not today. Maybe not ever again. 

The world was ending.

She should care that the world was ending.

But caring cost too much, and she'd paid that price too many times.

She was spent.

She stripped off the last of what she was wearing and climbed into the tub, hissing as the too hot water stung her skin. It would cool off quickly enough, and at least the pain was a contrast to the numbness that had permeated her for the last week, except for those precious few minutes she'd had in the City of Light...

"Here," Raven said, thrusting something into her hand. "One of the Grounders told me to tell you that they hid it from the other one. Whatever that means."

Clarke had no idea. She opened her hand to look at it, but it was a non-descript lump of a slightly waxy, somewhat slimy substance. She touched the surface of it with her other hand, and as soon as the hot water dripped from her skin onto it, she knew...

It smelled like sunshine and spice, like silken skin at sunset... 

It smelled like hope.

It smelled like _her_.

Clarke's eyes filled with tears and she squeezed the chunk of soap so hard it nearly shot out of her hand. 

"What?" Raven asked. "What's wrong?"

Clarke shook her head, swallowed down the emotion, sniffed back the tears. "Nothing. It's fine." She began to wash, using the soap and a rough cloth that had been left on the edge of the tub to scrub her skin maybe a little too hard, and then dunked her head under the water.

"Here," Raven said, holding out her hand for the soap. "Let me."

She rubbed it through Clarke's hair, and Clarke felt herself relax, just a little, under the massaging fingers on her scalp. It took a while to rinse it out, and then Raven handed her a robe to wrap herself in. She heard a hissing intake of breath and turned to look at her.

Raven pointed to the back of her left shoulder. "Shit, Griffin."

 _Oh._ "Hunting accident," she said, making light of the fact that she could – probably should – have died in the woods that way, facing off with that cat. If she had...

"Right. Sit down. This might take a while."

* * *

Raven lost track of time as she began at the ragged ends of Clarke's hair and worked her way up, trying to be gentle as she untangled it piece by piece. She tried to think of something to say, but no words came, and even if she'd known what to say, there was no guarantees that Clarke would be ready or willing to hear it. So she just kept her mouth shut. Finally she was able to pull the comb through without it snagging, and she set it aside.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the tin, sliding it open and lifting from it a little wire cage threaded onto a leather cord. Trapped in the wires was the Flame. She slid it around Clarke's neck and knotted the ends of the cord behind, so that the Flame rested like a jewel against her chest. 

"I thought..." Raven swallowed. "I thought maybe instead of carrying it around in a tin, you might like to keep it – her – close."

Clarke looked down at it, pulling it away from her skin to look at the way the wires wrapped around the edges of it, keeping it secure without obscuring the design. She let it fall again, and it came to rest exactly where it belonged: over her heart.

"Anyway..." Raven said, stepped out from behind her. "I'll leave—"

She didn't get to finish, because a second later Clarke hit her full force, her arms tightening around her into a hug that threatened to compress all the air from her lungs. Raven's arms were pinned against her sides so she couldn't even hug back.

After a few seconds, Clarke let go and reached up to touch the Flame again. "I thought I'd lost it," she said, her voice hoarse. "I lost..."

"I know," Raven said. "I didn't think you'd notice. I thought I would be done before you woke up, or before you checked. I guess I didn't figure..." She grimaced. "I'm sorry that you thought you'd lost it."

"It's okay," Clarke said, and maybe she even meant it. "It's not even really..." She touched it again, turned away. "I flipped the killswitch. She's probably not even..." Raven could see her jaw tense, watched her throat work as she swallowed. "I killed her. Again."

"No," Raven said. "You didn't kill her."

Clarke turned to look at her again, and in her eyes there was the first spark of hope that Raven had seen since Clarke's return from the City of Light. "She's still...?"

"Shutting down the City of Light stopped ALIE 1.0," Raven said. "I don't know what it might have done to ALIE 2.0, but I think that there's at least a chance that she's still there. If there was anyone to put that thing in... it should still work."

Clarke nodded, but her shoulders slumped. "There's not, though. The only one left is Luna, and she refused."

 _And she's not Lexa,_ Raven thought, knowing that that's what Clarke was thinking. Even if someone else took the Flame, became the Commander... they wouldn't be Lexa. There was only one Lexa, and she was gone.

Raven hadn't been her biggest fan; having someone order you to be tortured for something that you didn't do didn't exactly endear a person, and she hadn't forgotten that it was Lexa that had called for Finn's death, either. But at the same time, she'd stopped her people from killing Raven when she'd learned that she'd been framed. She'd let Finn's death at Clarke's hand be enough, even though it had robbed her people of the chance to make him suffer the way that he had caused them to suffer when he massacred a village. She wasn't a monster... or if she was, they all were, and maybe that was more accurate. 

Whatever her feelings for the fallen Commander had been, they didn't matter now. What mattered was Clarke, and Clarke had loved her. And lost her. And that was something that Raven was intimately familiar with. She'd taken the chip to escape it... and then fought her way back when she realized what the cost of that escape was. Better to live with the ache of the memories of what had been than to be happy... and empty.

"She loved you too," Raven said. "Lexa. She loved you too."

* * *

Clarke wrapped her hand around the Flame, tempted for a second to tug on the cord until it snapped and throw it as far as she could, out the window maybe, where it would get trampled on the street and lost forever. 

What good did it do her now, knowing that Lexa had loved her? 

Loved. Past tense.

But for Clarke it was still present tense. 

"You didn't even know her," Clarke said. 

"No," Raven said, "but I saw you together."

Clarke looked up at her, her eyes narrowing. "When?"

"In the City of Light. To anyone else, it was just a bunch of code streaming on the screen, but I'd been there, I'd seen it, and even though you took the chip out of my head, even though I wasn't able to access it anymore, I could look at the code and _see_ it," Raven said, her eyes lighting up in a way that might have made Clarke worry in the past, but now left her unfazed. "I saw when you went in there, and I saw when she found you. I saw."

Clarke closed her eyes. "Oh," she said. 

"Just because she didn't say it—"

"I know," Clarke said, cutting her off. She _did_ know... didn't she? Lexa had told her she would always be with her, and wasn't that close enough to the same thing? And before...

 _That's why I – That's why you're you,_ she'd said, and Clarke had heard what she wasn't saying. Had heard it, and acted on it, and now... 

If she could take it back, would she? If she could go back in time and change that moment, if she could just say goodbye and walk away... would it have made a difference? When she went to gather her things, would Titus still have come to find her if she hadn't lingered? Had he known what they were doing, what they'd done? 

Her eyes filled with tears and she nearly choked on the lump in her throat. 

"Thank you," she said, when she was able to say anything at all again. "For this." She realized she was still clutching the Flame and forced herself to let it go, let the chip come to rest against her chest, light and heavy all at once, anchoring her and pinning her down. 

"It's nothing," Raven said. "I..." She shrugged, and touched the origami raven necklace that she still wore, the metal bird that Finn had created for her, even though Finn was dead, and even though Finn had betrayed her even before he'd died. "I just thought since there was no one to put it in right now, you might like to keep her close."

Clarke nodded. "Thank you," she said again. She was exhausted, but knew she wouldn't sleep. She should probably actually _do_ something, call a meeting, figure out a strategy to deal with the impending actual end of the world. 96% of the world would soon be uninhabitable. There was basically no chance that they would be in the 4% that was spared.

Which was all right with her; she wasn't looking to be spared. Not this time. But the others... she had to at least try. She'd flipped that switch because she'd believed that they deserved another chance. One last chance to make things right. And if she didn't carry on with trying to bring their people together, if she didn't continue Lexa's mission of peace, bring her vision – the one that they'd shared even if they didn't always see eye to eye – to fruition, then her death was for nothing. 

Clarke couldn't let her death be for nothing.

"Tell me what you need me to do," she said.

* * *

"I didn't... This wasn't a bribe, Clarke," Raven said, part of her offended by the implication, but a larger part acknowledging that as irritated as she sometimes was with Clarke and the demands she made of people, she knew that the demands that people made of Clarke were just as bad, or worse. Everyone looked to her to solve everything, and never once thanked her. They only blamed her when things went wrong. And things always went wrong.

"What do _you_ want?" Raven asked. 

"Nothing," Clarke said. "To save our people." 

"I'm not asking about everyone else," Raven said. "What do you want for you?"

"Nothing," Clarke said again. "There was only thing I wanted for myself. I had it, and I lost it." Her shoulder slumped. "No, not lost. Killed. I killed it."

For a second Raven though she was talking about Finn. "You didn't kill Lexa," she said.

"The bullet that killed her was meant for me," Clarke said. 

"But you weren't the one that fired it," Raven said. "You didn't kill her."

"If it wasn't for me... if she hadn't loved me..." Clarke shook her head. "I kissed her last breath from her lips. I couldn't save her."

"Then she died knowing she was loved," Raven said. "That's not nothing. She wasn't alone. She wasn't..." But she didn't know if Lexa wasn't scared or not. Was it really possible to face death unafraid? 

"She shouldn't have died at all!" Clarke snapped. "It should have been me!" Then her voice dropped again, almost to a whisper. "I wish it had been me."

Raven opened her mouth, but no words came out. If she'd been able to trade places with Finn, if she could have exchanged her life for his, would she have? And if she had... what would things be like now? The things she'd done, he wouldn't have been able to do. But she wouldn't – couldn't – say that to Clarke. Because even she could admit that there really was no comparing Finn to Lexa when it came to the significance of their lives on the grander scale. Finn had meant _everything_ to her for a long time... but beyond that? Whereas Lexa had been important to pretty much every Grounder... and to the people of the Ark, as well, because whatever Pike and Bellamy and Monty's mom and all of their followers had wanted to believe, Raven was pretty sure that she'd been trying to do what she could to keep them safe as well. Maybe only so that she wouldn't lose Clarke, who knows, but what was more important, the motivation or the result? Alie had thought she was doing the right thing when she destroyed the world, after all.

"I want Lexa," Clarke said. "That's all I want." 

"I know," Raven said finally. "But—"

"When this is all over... when I've saved you all – again – when I don't owe any of you anything anymore..." Clarke looked at her, eyes bright with tears. "When it's over, I'll find my way back to her."

Raven knew what she was saying. She didn't want to know, she didn't want to understand, but she did. "When it's over," she said. "I'll help you."

"Thank you," Clarke said.

This time it was Raven who initiated the hug, and she didn't let go for a long, long time.

**Author's Note:**

> For the commenter who asked for Clarke and Raven bonding after season 3. I am 99% sure that this is not what you were looking for. I'm really sorry.
> 
> Inspired in part by [this comic](http://critter-of-habit.tumblr.com/post/144717623263/raven-must-have-heard-clarke-say-i-love-you) by critter-of-habit on Tumblr.


End file.
